A federal judge in Vermont has ruled that there should be no expectation of privacy for stored data shared through peer-to-peer file sharing.
The decision concerns a case of seizure of child pornography.
Although the defense argued that the data was obtained by the police illegally from a P2P network without a prior search warrant, the court ruled otherwise.
Police authorities used in their investigations a series of software known as “Child Protection System” which automatically identify files containing child pornography and match IP addresses, date and time, as well as other details of the computer involved.
The judge refused to disregard the files, rejecting the defense's claim that they were private, on the grounds that the defendants had made them publicly available through the P2P network.
Source: e-pcmag.gr
